MEMPHIS, Tenn. –As neighbors in the Fox Meadows community got ready for Halloween, some feared something much scarier lurked around the corner.
“Some activities goes on over there,” Stanley Harris said.
There is growing concern about the Stop & Shop on South Mendenhall Road.
Neighbors complained about drugs and gang activity.
“Through that promotion of fear, people don’t want to get involved,” Eddie Jones, with the Shelby County Commission, said.
Freaked out, people living in the area reached out to WREG and Commissioner Jones for help.
Jones is working with police and the District Attorney’s Office to get to the bottom of crime occurring in the area.
Commissioner Jones is trying to determine “whether or not this particular property will meet the standards for being a nuisance.”
Paul Hagerman said, “We actually have to look at the activity that’s — is this actually occurring there? What is their responsibility toward this activity? Then how do we prove it?”
The DA’s top nuisance prosecutor said it will take bold witnesses coming forward and police collecting solid evidence that crime is happening there.
“You know what I’m saying? It’s not a bad store,” Shaketa Royster, who works at Stop & Shop, said.
Royster has worked at the store for years and said the owner calls police whenever workers see anything fishy going on.
“I go out there all the time. You know? All the time — moving them,” Royster said. “‘Ya’ll need to move, or we are going to call the police.'”
Royster claimed the store is doing all it can to keep customers safe and hopes the store is not deemed a nuisance before they have a chance to tell their side of the story.
“If they get us closed down, how am I going to pay my bills?” she asked.
The store that has neighbors concerned backs up to another business that was once declared a nuisance.
The DA’s office closed the BP store at Knight Arnold and Mendenhall two years ago due to drugs and gangs.
Owners there agreed to increase security and other guidelines before the business reopened.
